Leader

This week is Advertising Week in NYC. For those of you in Europe who have not been able to jump on a flight to sip cocktails in the Big Apple, two big themes have emerged so far (which won’t surprise you): programmatic and native.

If you don’t follow US sports, you might have missed the crisis in the world of American football. The National Football League (NFL) – often described as the US’s largest sport export – is at the heart of a scandal involving players accused of domestic violence.

‘We are only three phone calls away from disaster.’ It’s a phrase used by Nigel Bogle, founder of BBH, to ensure his agency never gets complacent. But it’s not only ad agencies that have a precarious business model.

The allure and selling power of celebrities is allegedly dying, particularly in the charity sector, according to a recent report from Manchester and Sussex universities. A whopping 75 per cent of people claim that high-profile stars do little to grab their attention for non-profit causes.

Brands seem to stagger from disaster to crisis, from last year’s collapse of the Rana Plaza textile factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh and the discovery of horsemeat in various food products to this year’s shooting-down of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 and the massive data hacks of eBay and Sony.

Philip Clarke has announced his departure as Tesco chief executive – one day before his party celebrating 40 years service – to make way for Dave Lewis, a career brand marketer who joins from Unilever (see our news analysis, Mark Ritson’s take on it or visit our dedicated Tesco homepage for all the latest).

Are you a master storyteller? Or a data translator? If not, you could be missing out on one of the plum new roles emerging within the marketing industry. Marketing Week has polled our audience of senior executives to ask for the top five roles they’re keen to hire.